BAD Internet Laws Heading Your Way (I'm not American, but some of you are, and you have to fight!)

Originally posted by write_light at BAD Internet Laws Heading Your Way

From the flist: 



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Website Blocking

The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn't be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

Read this analysis from boing-boing.net

Get on the phone and call your representative. Express your disapproval. Tell him or her exactly how you feel, and that you don't support this. Tell your friends to call their representatives, their Congressperson, and complain. Mention that you are a registered voter that takes your civic responsibility seriously and that you will use that vote to express your feelings about this.

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_60/Internet-Companies-Boost-Hill-Lobbying-210345-1.html?pos=olobh

“We support the bill’s stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting,” the Internet companies wrote in Tuesday’s letter. “Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites.”  The chamber-led coalition in support of the bill includes Walmart, Eli Lilly & Co. and Netflix.

Google and other opponents of the legislation argue that restricting the Internet in the U.S. sets a bad international precedent and that the language defines infringing too broadly.

AND WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF ROTTEN AMERICAN GOVERNANCE!

Read this - http://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2011/11/18/shine_a_light_on_americas_afghan-iraqi_rathole/page/full/ - with a strong brush or with a steel comb to put back your hair, because it is sure to stand on end. UNIMAGINABLE. That at a time of crisis the Washington DC leadership should frivolously waste TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS - and I am not, repeat not, exaggerating - on failed policies simply beggars belief. I was in favour of the Afghanistan war, but unless it is fought as a war ought to be fought - rather than this crazed nation-building waste in a place that does not want to be nation-built - then I say take the soldiers home and we'll take our chances with Al Qaeda and the other swine. We can't afford this trash, and I don't just mean the USA. Unless crazed war spending is curtailed, it's not only the USA that will lose. You can't bribe people into being your friend, especially if you entered their country by force. The WWII parallel simply does not hold: not only in Italy and Germany, but even in Japan, there were considerable forces - ultimately the majority - that ranged from a willingness to put up with, to an enthusiastic support of, democratic governance and American supremacy. Guess what? In Afghanistan there aren't. And that is not just because this is a Muslim country, but because the forces that supported a secular and westernizing policy took the Soviet side in the first civil war and were destroyed. London is thick with Afghani refugees from the old pro-Soviet government, who will never go home again. The barbarous murder of Najibullah represents the utter defeat of these forces, and successive waves of mujaheddin and Taliban tyranny have pushed Afghanistan ever further in one direction and one direction alone. When the Allies entered Italy, Germany and Japan they found whole groups of liberals, Christian democrats, social democrat, republican opponents, coming out of millions of hiding places and blinking in the sudden sunlight; in Afghanistan, they found... tribal Muslim warriors, and more tribal Muslim warriors. The whole hearts-and-mind project is nonsense and must be killed; it has degenerated into the most monstrous festival of corruption and theft in history, in which enormous sums go directly over to the enemy and allow them to go on murdering (what they do is not really fighting) our troops. And if the war can't be fought without this monstrous waste of money, then it must not be fought at all. As for those who allowed it to take this grotesque shape, impeachment's too good for any one of them.